Julia (Winslet) is a free-spirited single mom who decides to leave London and take her two daughters, Bea and Lucy, to live in Morocco in 1972. She gets by on sales of homemade dolls and the occasional check from the girls' father. Julia believes that a conversion to the Sufi life will solve her problems, while Bea would rather they settle into a "normal" life. Julia meets, and has a passionate affair with, juggler and sometime con man Bilal, whom the girls adopt as a surrogate father figure. Winslet plays her character's mixture of naivete and motherly concern well, and looks good doing it, as does the whole movie. The Moroccan locales are brilliantly displayed. Character development and consistent narrative are sometimes lacking.